Wednesday, 1 August 2007

The Aurora Electrical Company

If electricity can be generated by moving a coil through a magnetic field, why do we not launch large coils into orbit? As they circled Earth within the planet?s magnetic field, the energy could be sent down from the coils via microwave: even people in remote areas could receive it. I suspect that this system would cost much less than energy generation does at present. So tell me, what flaws in this scheme would prevent me from picking up my Nobel prize?

As the coil moves through the Earth's magnetic field a current would be induced in it, which we could beam down to the surface or use to power our satellite. Unfortunately, this current would create its own magnetic field around the coil, opposed to the Earth's. This would act as a brake, slowing the satellite down so it falls into a lower orbit and - eventually - back down to Earth. You could burn fuel to speed the satellite back up, but this would take at least as much energy as the satellite generated while it was slowing down.

Thinking about fuel, conservation of enery means that the energy you'd spend lifting it up into orbit and then accellerating it to the necessary speed would have to be at least equal to the energy that could be extracted as it slowed back down and fell to earth. Given that there's no way we could work the systems involved at 100% efficiency, you'd be much better off just burning the rocket fuel in turbine hooked to the national grid.

Still, if you could manufacture these in space and accellerate them into orbit using some sort of gravity slingshot, you might be able to generate more energy before they fall than was expended getting them there in the first place. As a bonus, the regular burn-ups of coils falling into the atmosphere would look spectacular.

You can't get electrical energy for free; some other form of energy must be drained. When a coil moves though a magnetic field, the electric current that this induces generates a force that acts to oppose the motion of the coil. So in a dynamo, for instance, an external form of mechanical energy is needed to keep the coil spinning. In a coil orbiting Earth, the induced force would slow the coil down, causing it to fall from orbit and plunge to Earth.

If you mounted a rocket on the coil to keep it in orbit, you would find that the amount of electrical energy generated would never exceed the amount of energy you spent keeping the coil in orbit, not to mention the exceedingly large amount of energy required to get it into orbit in the first place. So sorry, no Nobel prize.

This idea would waste far more energy than you could ever generate from the coil. It is not without merit, however. NASA has experimented with conductive tethers in orbit. They have tried using them both to generate electricity from the motion of a satellite around the Earth and, by reversing the process, to change the orbit of a satellite around Earth by passing electricity through the tether (see New Scientist, 17 February 1996, p 23 and 2 March 1996, p 13). They were not successful, and neither were more recent efforts - see this article.

As the other responses have stated - placing a coil in orbit is a waste of rocket fuel. That said, many people have seriously considered the idea of placing solar arrays in space for bulk electrical collection. Solar panels in space are a factor 30% more illuminated. This is one of the prime ideas for uses of the space elevator. It is unfortuante though - I ball park the costs are 493 million per megaWatt, plus the R&D costs of the microwave system. If you could decrease the launch costs to a small fraction though - say under 3 million(they currently sit at about 485 million), you could easily complete this more cheaply in orbit then on the ground. With an S.E., you find this happens quite easily with the price estimates at hand of 100$/kg, with slightly more efficient cells then I used in my estimates.

HEY! I had a simularidea that I wrote and indiviual who workes at CERN concerning... I kept the email so instead of re-writing tho whole concept here is a copy/paste----I'm not sure if you can help me personally but perhaps someone in your facility might... My name is Matthew McFadden I am 24 and live in the US. I am an enlisted ARMY soldier currently attending a radiology tech course at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio TX.

Since a child upon being exposed to the concept of perpetual motion, I have pondered from time to time a device that may disprove the opinion/ truth of such a device ever existing. During my studies here I have been exposed to basic physics principles including general photon properties, magnetism, electromagnetism, etc. These few basic principles has opened my eyes and expanded the possibilities,in my mind, regarding perpetual motion. Before arriving here to Ft. Sam I had spent a decent amount of time self-researching quantum mechanics/ physics in which time I was introduced to your organization. Amongst many thing learned I was also introduced to the concept know as photon entanglement. My knowledge in this subject is very limited yet I feel I get the basic concept. Somehow, photons are "entangled" in some kind of partnership, separated at distances that are in theory unlimited, a stimulus is caused upon one photon and instantaneously the exact stimulus in observed in its "partner" photon.

Well I was pondering last night and came up with an idea that could, in theory, solve our earthly energy/ global warming crisis amongst many other problems here on our planet. I know in order to create a stimuli induced on a photon requires energy. I know that photons are energy and energy can be transfered into other forms of energy. I also know that, for now, no energy is "free." A perpetually moving device can only be created in an atmosphere containing no friction i.e. a vacuum or outer space. The device or process I conceived involves a perpetually moving satellite creating its own energy in outer space, also containing photons with its partner entangled photons remaining here on earth. The energy this mechanism would create would be used to alter the state of the entangled photons in space there for inducing the corresponding states of the photons here on earth. I would think that there would somehow be a way to create an energy creating device from the changing states of the photon remaining here on earth. Again my knowledge in this subject is limited and was just wondering if this conceived process would somehow ever be possible. I was also wondering why no one has made a perpetual motion energy creating device in space to power the existing satellite today? I appreciate you time and look forward to seeing progress from you organization come next year upon completion of the particle accelerator.

From a casual readers perspective, (cue flamers and people with superiority complexes) the proposed process might become more feasible if an emdrive was employed as a means to counter the braking effect. I've read there is now a version of an emdrive capable of constant running. Power from solar panels and from the coil could be used to run the engine. I assume due to inefficiencies there would be a trade off on size of coil and engine versus the amount of usable energy produced. Just a thought I had.

The point is that the energy needed to keep the object in orbit would be be equal or greater than the energy gained from it. Conservation of energy. If you found some superconductors that worked at +300 dgress c then maybe....

Has anyone considered the idea of tethering a coil array to a large object orbiting the earth that requires no energy to keep it in orbit, such as the moon? I know that would be one LONG tether but the energy problem would thus vanish?

Even attatching a coil to the moon would take mechanical energy from the moon,gradually slowing it down, as it would create a force at right angles to the field. It would take a long time to seriously affect it, but anyhow the moon lies outside the earths magnetic field. There is a much easier way to generate power from the moons momentum - tidal power. It would be great if foldable solar cells could be developed, and lauched into the L1 position, where they would recieve sunlight 100% of the time.

Disregarding his ideas of free energy from nothing. Was interested by his mention of the alteration of states of photons requiring energy etc. and the entangled photons instantly responding at theoretically any distance away.

Might there be a method here to get energy (however generated, solar most likely) back down from space rather than using huge microwave beams that have some danger potential (space-based super-doomsday laser anyone?).

Aaaah, it would probably end up taking more energy to make it anyway....

Earth magnetic field is weak: about 0.5 Gauss, to be compared to 100 Gauss for permanent magnets or 15000 Gauss for a big electro-magnet (http://www.coolmagnetman.com/magflux.htm), and it weakens with distance. I'm not sure, but I don't think it would be possible to extract more power per kilogram for a coil than from solar panels in orbit, and as already said in previous comments, weight is the prime factor when trying to put something in orbit.

Well, if anyone would take the trouble of reading his letter thoroughly, his idea wasn't about free energy; he simply left the energy generation out of the discussion. His contribution was to propose using quantum entanglement to transfer energy. (Although photons probably wouldn't work too well; electrons are a better bet.) As far as I know, it's still a matter of discussion whether quantum entanglement could in theory be used to send messages - in which case energy would be transferred, albeit at an efficiency which would probably make it wildly uneconomical to create entangled electron pairs and transport halves of them up into orbit. But you have to admit it would be a neat way of siphoning energy off a black hole, or from some similarly dangerous environment.

What fascinates me most about this discussion, though, is the number of people who lash out at some person who simply happens to be ignorant, without themselves even being able to explain what it is that he does not know. Mr. MacFadden, I apologize on their behalf; like me and you, they are simply dilettantes, but lack the courage to say so. And rest assured that their reaction is absolutely not typical for scientists.

Of course it's not useful for generating net energy to return to Earth for use there, but tapping the field for onboard power is useful and being explored. The best application is a tether, an antenna of sorts, not a coil (as I understand it).

Spacecraft interacting with interplanetary fields may have applications for manuevering or, more interestingly, slowing on arrival at another stellar system, without needing fuel for reaction.

Reading into your description I assume your are describing a satellite that makes use of the virtually frictionless environment of space to create or store energy and then uses entangled photons to transmit said energy to it's intended destination.

If your expect to be able to perpetually draw energy from lets say the spin of some mass inside the satellite then your out of gas right from the start bacause the act of drawing energy from said object would invariably slow that object down in porportion to the energy drawn. Mind you clever design might allow you store energy in a spinning mass fairly efficently though you would have to be carefull with the design.

Now as to entanglement I'm no expert but as far as I know there is no practical way to perpetually store a photon entangled or otherwise. On top of that I have never heard of a way to use entanglement to transfer energy using photons or electrons. Although not authoratitive I believe this link says it clearly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation It may be only Wikipedia but I am sure of you follow it's links far enough you might get a better reason why not. Also I suspect even if you found a way to do it the fragility of quantum states would likely make it very impractical to scale up.

One day we might have space based power plants but I suspect most of that will have to wait until we have some really cheap way into space or some form of manufacturing facilities on the moon. As otherwise we are talking about having to lift too much mass to reach the multimegawatt scale.

Just like a generator the coils moving through the earths magnetic fields would indeed produce power. However, just as the generator needs mechanical energy to move the rotor, so does the coil moving in the earths field.

In this case the kinetic energy of the spacecraft would effectively be converted into electrical energy until the orbit decayed - so no free lunch!

From an economic perspective, I would imagine the cost of both putting the gnerating equipment in orbit and installing the receiving infrastructure would be massive compared with current power generation methods.

I imagine that proponents might claim that ongoing costs would be minimal (no or low maintenance, don't need to burn fuel like normal powerplants etc) and that this might outweigh the massive upfront costs.

Very untrue - there would be large cash outflows every year. Such a huge project would likely need to be financed by borrowing and the interest cost on this would be huge. Although I've not done any numbers I imagine that the costs of financing would put the kybosh on this ever getting off the ground.

I had just about the same idea 5-7 years ago - fun to see that others have had the same though - 2 bad that its no good (apparently)... I think maybe big solar panels in outer space - with nano-repair-bots to repair damages if/when they occour, could be a similar source of energy since the effects of the sun is much stronger in space... I dont know how the energy could be transported to earth though - but im sure some clever ppl will figure out how to sort out that problem

Hey in the case that this coil idea worked you could use an Ion engine to combat the decaying orbit problem, of course I'm not sure if the current Ion engines possess enough thrust to go against the decaying orbit problem however it would require very little fuel, reducing the size and weight of the satellite and can be powered by some of the power collected, or add a solar array to power the ion thruster and the coil can keep all its power for transmission to earth. Of course given temperature variations in orbit would probably affect the efficiency of the conductor coil, poor energy generation on the sunny side and good energy on the night side.

for every crazy idea that someone comes up with, there are several ideas which will branch off and become excellent innovations. Never be afraid to think of the improbable, impossible, or illogical. Just like any body of water, if the mind is allowed to be still it will stagnate and turn into so much useless muck.

Are we saying that an astronaut on the international space station can simply put a little lightbulb across a coil and it will light up? Why doesn't this happen on earth? After all, standing on the rotating earth, we are moving in a magnetic field?

Your coil in orbit moving through the earth's magnetic field will generate a current alright. It will also experience an electromotive force opposite it's direction of motion. This will cause its orbit to decay so it will eventually burn up in the atmosphere soon after launch. This same force is felt by electrodynamic space tethers. In order to reboost these tethers current must be injected into them to generate a positive electromotive force which will raise the tether's orbit.Sorry. There's no such thing as a free "launch".

You can't do it in earth orbit for the reasons mentioned, but you could do it on the the surface of, say, Europa, as it moves through the vast Jovian magnetic field. Do it for say a trillion trillion years and you might slow Europa enough to bring it crashing down onto Jupiter, but for all practical purposes it is free energy. That is as long as you don't count the energy it takes to get to Europa in the first place.

Greetings Doug or anyone. So you are saying a coil (held by an astronaut for example) will light a little bulb. Why doesn't the filiment in the bulb see the same electric field in the opposite sense from the coil? If I follow a circuit around a loop I end up at the same potential I started.

Anybody thought of using the untapped power of the casmir effect between two plates to power a dynamo, or something similar? Could someone explain the intricacies that make this idea not feasable? (besides the ludicrously small manufacturing methods that would be needed)

There is no such thing an perpetual motion. This can only be an illusion due to a lack of understanding of how a system works. Even in "frictionless" space, you're going to have radiation/etc. even gravity causes friction and a device will stop spinning.

remember, work is done by tapping off of energy flow. if 'all' the energy is converted into work, then there is no energy flow. chicken and egg problem. can't be 100% efficient.

Why couldn't you adapt that to a secured land based magnet directly over the north or south poles where the lines of force are vertical to the earths surface and not horizontal?Surely that would work?imagineer at imagineer.net.au

Not to add to over kill, but hasn't anyone considered that in order to collect the energy from a moving object in space here on Earth (the object must rotate round the Earth to generate currant, e.g. moving through the Earths magnetic field) a mobile collection unit would also be required on the surface of the Earth also.

But it's the speed that the collection unit would have to move at, that might cause a small problem. Then there's the energy required to move it.

I was inspired by the many comments before... But I'm a little of a crackpot, so here goes.

A gigantic geothermal vent exhausting molten materials or energy into space. The decrease of the mass of the earth increases its rotational velocity and orbiting speed to the degree that it counteracts the reduction caused by the drag of an enormous tethered coil, orbiting the equator and held in space by the centrifugal forces of the rotating planet. Wouldn't that be a sight?

Matt McFadden's letter does raise a point. As I understand it he was asking why couldn't entangled photons be used as an energy-transmission tool. I'm not well-versed in entanglement theory but if two photons are entangled but at some distance from one another, and an energy input to one is "felt" by it's partner, then is there some loss of this energy during the supposed transmission, analogous to the electromotive force that would work on a space satellite tethered to earth?

I am not really sure, but I think I read an article about a german scientist some years back that tried to use a giant coil below ground to draw energy out of the spinning of the earth. But as many before me have mentioned, this would cause the earth to slow down and was for this reason abandoned. Altough it could be used to adjust the spinning to exactly 24 hours and removing the calender mess :)But all this got me thinking about if we could use this knowledge to terraform other planets, some of them seem to face the sun with the same side and hence beeing an unpleasant place for us to live, couldnt we send two coils and a solararray to add energy and then slowly start to spin the planet up in speed till we had a usable turning speed. Just a thought, perhaps nasa could use it for something someday :) ( sorry for my english its not my first language)

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